According to Bloomberg, the Ethiopian government canceled a
2010 lease that Karuturi, an India-based agricultural
company, had taken out on 100,000 acres of farmland.

Despite making an over $100 million investment in the
country's farming sector, Karuturi was accused of breaking
its lease agreement in developing only 1,200 acres thus far.
But the company claimed that it had received waivers from the
Ethiopian government in the past, and said that it did not
recognize the project's cancellation.

According to Bloomberg, Karuturi had taken over land
that the Ethiopian state had sold off as part of a controversial
program in which the government leased 3.3 million acres of
farmland to foreign investors after allegedly displacing some of
that land's original tenants.

While Karuturi arguably stood to benefit from
Ethiopia's centralized single-party regime, it's now learned the
risk involved in pouring $100 million into an opaque
authoritarian state.

And Ethiopia's leaders, who want both economic prosperity
and total political control, might soon find that these
objectives aren't nearly as mutually reinforcing as they'd
hoped.

Women
mourn during the funeral ceremony of Dinka Chala, a primary
school teacher who family members said was shot dead by military
forces during a recent demonstration, in Holonkomi town, in
Oromiya region of Ethiopia on December 17,
2015.Tiksa
Negeri/Reuters

Like Karuturi's disappeared $100 million investment,
the Addis Ababa expansion plan embodies the perils and
contradictions of the Ethiopian regime's long-term strategy
of securing internal calm through economic growth and strong ties
with foreign powers like the US and China.

As in past eras, the Ethiopian capital is being built up
as a showpiece of the country's modernity and development, and as
a reflection of Ethiopia's sense of its unique place in the
world. Addis has one of Africa's first light rails, a Chinese-built,
19.6-mile system that opened last year.

The city and the surrounding area are home to both of the
country's
Chinese special economic zones, industrial parks
where Chinese companies get tax breaks in exchange for
operating in Ethiopia and hiring local employees. The Addis
expansion plan would have incorporated neighboring areas into the
capital district, enabling more holistic and centralized urban
planning for a rapidly growing and economically vital capital
city.

But the expansion plan also came at the expense of land in
the Oromia Region — and it ended up exposing some of the
deepest fractures in Ethiopian society.

The current Ethiopian government, which is entirely run by
the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, which is
descended from the militia that overthrew the ruling
communist state in 1991 after a protracted civil war, is among
the most oppressive in Africa.

The EPRDF
regime is dominated largely by elites from the Tigrayan
ethnic group. But its rule depends on a baseline of
inter-communal harmony — just as it depends on the appearance of
progress and economic growth.

The Addis plan is one instance in which these two
objectives came into direct conflict.Protests over
the plan, which Oromo viewed as a land grab undertaken by an
oppressive and unrepresentative central government,
broke out in late 2015. The government responded with
a crackdown
that killed 140 people, marking perhaps the
deadliest outburst of political violence in the country
since its civil war ended in 1991.

Even if the plan has been suspended, the Addis Ababa
expansion push is an extension of aggressive growth
policies that are fundamental to the regime's self-image and
possibly its survival, policies enabled by strong arm
tactics that a country might not accept accept.

But the protests showed that economic growth and
authoritarianism can't paper over a general sense of
frustration.

As Jeffrey Smith, head of the RFK Center's sub-Saharan
Africa-related advocacy programs explained to Business
Insider, the suspension of the plan will do little to reduce
popular discontent towards the regime.

"If the government is trying to head off larger protests
and discontent in the country, then it's much too little and much
too late," Smith wrote in an email. "During the protests, an
estimated 140 people were killed and thousands were injured,
opposition leaders and journalists were jailed, and the
constitution was shredded ... there has been no accountability
for the deaths of protesters and dissent continues to be
criminalized and violently suppressed."

A worker works on the
electrified light rail transit construction site in Ethiopia's
capital Addis Ababa, on December 16, 2014.Tiksa Negeri/Reuters

As with Karuturi's apparent ejection from the country, the
contradictions of trying to build a robust
economy without genuine political freedom or basic
transparency are manifesting themselves. But with the Addis plan,
the stakes are much higher for the regime.

The Oromo protests are "engendering an intensified ethnic
awareness that has also revitalized calls for genuine self-rule
in the region," Smith writes.

That's a huge threat to a government that's itself came to
power following an ethnically fractious civil war. "I think
leaders in Addis Ababa has gotten much more than they bargained
for," says Smith.